Like others, when I read in the Portsmouth
Daily Times (26 Nov. 2012: click here) that the Building (or Bilking) Committee is recommending
tearing down both the Marting building and the former Adelphia building, and
replacing them with a new Municipal Building and a new Justice Center, I thought
they’ve got to be kidding. Has the Daily Times become the Daily Show of the print medium? Is Frank
Lewis Stephen Colbert, reporting preposterous
stories with a straight face? How in the
world is Portsmouth going to come up with the money? Isn’t this the city that’s
under fiscal watch and isn’t it the seat of Scioto County, the first county that
the State of Ohio ever put on fiscal watch?

Perhaps fearing sticker shock, the PDT article apparently didn’t dare print the estimated total
cost of the two building projects, but
if you do the math on the basis of the figures provided—$200 a square foot for
each of the proposed 75,000 square feet, that comes out to $15 million dollars,
but I’ve been told the $200 a foot is not an estimate but a
fantasy. The two existing buildings, for those who
might not know their sordid histories, were virtually empty worthless
properties that were unloaded on the city and its taxpayers with the connivance of two crooked
city officials: Mayor Greg Bauer in the case of the Marting building and appointed
First Ward councilman shyster Mike Mearan in the case of the Adelphia building. The
city foolishly paid almost $2 million for the Marting building and in the
case of the freaking, leaking, black-molded Adelphia building, the city
acquired, or got stuck with, the property by doing no more than excusing the delinquent
back taxes and allowing the Los Angeles
absentee landlord to claim it was a charitable gift to the city, providing him a write
off on his income taxes.

I believe that what has long indirectly driven the downtown Marting nuttiness
is Jeffrey Albrecht’s determination to get control, directly or indirectly, of
the land on which the Municipal Building sits, right across from his new
Holiday Inn. He has doubled down on his
original investment mistake, the Ramada Inn, the Queen of the Rust Belt, and before the Holiday Inn too proves a financial
failure, he is going to do everything he
can to convince the naïve and gullible that the Municipal Building has got to come down,
no matter what the cost to taxpayers. The Municipal Building is about the same age as the U.S. Post Office, just up the street, and is of the same design and
constructed of the same materials, so why is the one supposed to be at death’s
door while the other is an architectural treasure of the city? Because corrupt
city officials and greedy developers have been trying for some time to kill the eighty-year-old gal to get the
valuable ground on which she rests. That’s why.

The history of Portsmouth real estate is replete with examples
of well-to-do well-connected owners unloading overvalued but nearly worthless property on the taxpayers. It goes with the territory. The Bilking Committee recommends that all
unoccupied, unessential property “be sold absolutely at auction.” Absolutely?
At auction? Presumably that means all unused
city property deemed unessential will be sold at auction, positively, post-haste,
without question. I think this is the
Jeffrey Albrecht provision in the Bilking Committee’s recommendations. In a recent article in the PDT, he predicted
property would soon be bought and sold in downtown Portsmouth (i.e., in the vicinity
of the Holiday Inn), and he said he hoped that property owners would not be
greedy and ask too much of buyers. He obviously had not only heard but probably had
something to do with the recommendations the Bilking Committee came up with. Buy cheap and sell dear is the first law of real
estate, but Albrecht wants that law suspended, or reversed, because he or his accomplices will be the ones doing the
buying. As long as something is built on the Municipal Building site that will create
more business for the Holiday Inn, he will be for it, no matter what it is or
what it will cost taxpayers. And of course, he wants the Municipal Building to be auctioned off. We know
how adept he is reputed to be at rigging auctions because the state attorney
general came close to taking legal action against him after shenanigans that
took place at a controversial auction in Athens.

Yes, Santa’s got a twinkle in his shifty eyes and a few tricks up his sleeve, for this is the season of Marting’s madness and Albrecht’s folly.

Thursday, November 08, 2012

Having failed at handling their own finances, bankrupt Portsmouth city officials
then went on and mishandled the city’s finances, misallocating funds intended for roads, public buildings, etc., to increase their salaries and benefits
and the salaries and benefits of other city employees, especially the fire department.

The current unelected mayor Malone, who likes to gamble, lived beyond his wife’s
public sector salary and went bankrupt:

Former mayor Kalb lived beyond his grocery clerk salary
and went bankrupt:

The deadbeatpresident of city council Haas lived beyond his means and went bankrupt:

City solicitor Jones lived beyond his means, is now insolvent, unable to repay his donut loan to the SOGP, and may go bankrupt if he is not bailed
out by his enabler, American Savings Bank:

In Portsmouth, the also-rans of life, the financial and moral bankrupts, with the support of the crooks who control the city, run unopposed for public office and pocket the difference.

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About Me

Retired now, I was born in Boston, Massachusetts, hold B.A. and M.A. degrees in English from Wesleyan U. (Conn.) and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale, where I was a Research Associate at the Institute for Social and Policy Studies and a coordinator of a committee that organized international American Studies conferences during the American Bicentennial. From 1989-2006, I taught English at Shawnee State U., in Portsmouth, Ohio, where I was active in the faculty union, the Shawnee Education Association, serving four terms as president. I also served as faculty advisor to the student gay and lesbian group. I have served also as president of the Concerned Citizens of Portmouth and Scioto County, a community action group.
My scholarly interests have focused on the American Dream: the Myth and the Realities.
I can be reached at rforr1@roadrunner.com
A selection of my poems can be found at http://xpalidosis.blogspot.com The original contents of all blogs on this site are copyrighted @.